"Big Foot's camp after Battle of Wounded Knee; U.S. soldiers amid scattered debris of camp" (photo: Library of Congress)


The coffee’s freshly ground, there’s a wide variety of teas and the sticky buns are homemade.

  • Free Bradley Manning!!! “The prosecution of Pvt. Bradley Manning for inconvenient truth-telling is more proof of how hypocritical Official Washington is, especially when Manning’s case is compared to how Bush administration officials walked despite clear evidence that they sanctioned torture and other war crimes, notes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.”
  • “The cost of borrowing faced by the Italian government has fallen sharply at its latest debt auction. The government raised 9bn euros ($11.8bn, £7.56bn) in short-term debt at half its previous interest rate. The interest on the six-month bills was 3.251%, down from 6.504% at the last similar auction in November.”
  • Mitch Jeserich of Letters & Politics talks with Paul Dixon about “The Bonus Army: The Original “Occupy” Movement.”
  • From Real News: “Voices From the Occupy Movement. Across the country, the Occupy Movement is developing new forms of exposing the 1%.”
  • Amy Goodman: “All eyes are on Iowa this week, as the hodgepodge field of Republican contenders gallivants across that farm state seeking a win, or at least “momentum,” in the campaign for the party’s presidential nomination. But behind the scenes, a battle is being waged by Republicans – not against each other, but against American voters.”
  • “Capital punishment faces its own death sentence in a growing number of US states as decades of ethical and political stalemate are being broken by a fresh focus on cold, hard cash. The weakened economy has recently drawn attention to an unexpected but stark fact: that sentencing someone to death costs more than life without parole.”

An anniversary – 121 years

When the first Europeans settled in what was to become the United States the country was home to a vast number of indigenous people. There were the Northeastern Woodlands tribes, the Southeastern Woodlands tribes, the Plains tribes and tribes further to the west. By the early 1800s most of the Northeastern and Southeastern tribes had either been killed off or forcibly moved to lands further to the west. The indigenous people of the Plains, however, continued their resistance to the invasion of the white man until the late 19th century.

On the morning of 29 December 1890 elements of the 7th Cavalry massacred between 150 and 300 (depending on the source) Miniconjou Lakota (Sioux) near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. This band of Miniconjou, led by Spotted Elk, had been escorted to the location the previous day by the cavalry. Probably unknown to Spotted Elk and his people, Sitting Bull had been killed at the Standing Rock Agency by Agency Police 2 weeks earlier, on 15 December. For all intents and purposes the subjugation of America’s indigenous population was complete.

I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream . . . . the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.

—- Black Elk (Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, John G Neihardt)

Native Americans have not given up their struggle with the US government, however. On 27 February 1973 a number of Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement (AIM) members seized and occupied the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation and held it until 5 May. Earlier this year Native American ranchers and farmers agreed to a $680 million settlement with USDA. A land claim concerning the Black Hills is an ongoing dispute between the US government and the Lakota nation.

Never. Give. Up.

Editorial cartoon

The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off.